


Love on the water, love underwater

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Episode: s01e03 The Great Game, M/M, Mention of suicide ideation, Pining John, Pool scene, S3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-28
Updated: 2014-12-28
Packaged: 2018-03-03 22:47:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2890844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes John wishes they had died in that swimming pool.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love on the water, love underwater

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Jen, my only love, to astudyinrose for the beta and to Thea who was harsh and to whom I didn't listen, so if this is bad it's my fault.

The warmth of Sherlock’s fingers pressed against John’s hand almost burns him. It’s not the first time their bare skins have touched. John distinctly remembers every one of them. He remembers Sherlock’s hands divesting him of his jacket in a darkened swimming pool, he remembers his arms encircling Sherlock’s torso while putting him back to bed, he remembers holding his hand during _that night_ (before the end, before everything changed, before his whole world crumbled under his feet, evaporated, and Sherlock’s hand was so warm and firm and John could only think about kissing him). John remembers a posh restaurant, his fingers gliding against Sherlock’s neck, undecided, not knowing if he wanted to strangle him or kiss him. He remembers sliding out of his chair, groping Sherlock’s knee and blaming it on the alcohol as if anyone other than Sherlock could have ever believed that. He remembers hugging him, his fingers lingering on Sherlock’s neck – how he didn’t want to let go.

This time is different. The other times had sounded like a promise. This one seems like a goodbye. No. Not a goodbye. A farewell.

(John knows it isn’t possible. They have a plan. Or – Sherlock has a plan and convinced John to go along with it. He has told John – he has – eyes wide and begging, in a hospital room, to trust him, to go along with the plan. And, that’s what John is doing. Sherlock going away in Eastern Europe wasn’t part of the plan but John trusts Sherlock, even after all that happened and will carry through. Will follow the plan until the end.

It still feels like a farewell.

John thinks he’s going to be sick.

They should be shaking hands. That’s what they should be doing. They aren’t. They’re holding hands and it’s different, it’s completely different and John remembers a time he wished they had died.

That’s not something John likes to think about. That’s not something John even wants to acknowledge most of the time. (Just like John doesn’t want to acknowledge that the gun in this drawer, before he met Sherlock, wasn’t meant to kill serial killers disguised as cabbies.)

John still can’t help thinking about it.

***

The first time, John is sitting in a pub. He just came back from visiting Sherlock’s grave. He can still feel the cold stone underneath his fingertips, the marble keeping Sherlock’s body a prisoner. That’s what John thinks anyway. He thinks that Sherlock’s body, Sherlock – who was so graceful and always in movement when he was alive – shouldn’t be contained between walls of stone, shouldn’t be restricted, even in death.

That’s the first time John formulates the thought. The first time John dares think about it.

They should have died in that swimming pool.

He wishes they had died in that swimming pool.

John swallows his whiskey and imagines scenarios.

In the first one they’re still in the swimming pool, facing Moriarty, when the bomb goes off.

It’s like a dream, where everything is blurred and heavy. John jumps to rescue Sherlock, and drags him in the water. The smell of chlorine is overwhelming. It almost annihilates everything else. They are in the water – they are underwater and John knows they don’t have a lot of time, that they will have to breathe fresh air again soon, but right now everything is exploding around them, objects are flying and they have to stay protected. John is holding Sherlock against him, his grip firm on Sherlock’s shoulders.

Under the water, Sherlock looks like a dream. He looks even more otherworldly than usual and John loves him so much he’s not sure he’s still breathing. Everything is closing around them. Sherlock is trying to get free of John’s grasp, but John can’t let him do that, John can’t let him resurface until the explosion has ended, until it’s safe. He knows they have to remain underwater, that they have to bear the nauseating smell of the pool; that they have to hang on. Just a little longer.

John kisses Sherlock. He tries to tell himself it’s an attempt at distracting Sherlock from resurfacing (they can’t, they can’t), but the truth is that’s what he has wanted to do for months, as soon as he entered that lab at St Bart’s and saw Sherlock standing there.

They’re going to die, John realizes. The explosion is still going on, there isn’t enough time and they can’t resurface. They’ll die, drowned in that swimming pool. John can feel himself losing his grip on Sherlock’s body, he can feel his brain begging him to get some air, he can feel all that, but there’s still Sherlock’s mouth on his and that’s all that matters. 

In his arms, Sherlock’s body gradually stops fighting and John knows Sherlock understands that this is it. There’s no escape. They can either go up or stay underwater, but they can never breathe again. Something settles in Sherlock’s eyes. Something that looks like an apology. Something that tastes like forgiveness.

When it all ends, they’re still kissing, their bodies entwined.

John can’t tell if what he’s feeling is remorse or relief.

They’re holding hands and John is dimly aware that Mary isn’t that far from them, that Mycroft may be watching them – that they are not alone.

John remembers dreaming about the pool – about a thousand ways it could have ended. He remembers waking up, shaking, and fiercely glad that they had survived. That even though they weren’t what John wanted them to be, that Sherlock was sleeping downstairs and not curled against John, they were still alive, they still had time.

John is standing on this tarmac, his hand holding Sherlock’s, and he knows they have run out of time. He can barely stand looking at Sherlock – keeps glancing away – but there’s nothing to focus on, only emptiness.

He wishes he could recapture the moment Sherlock had looked at him and they had agreed to die together.

He wishes they were that close again.

***

The second time, Sherlock almost died again, not once but twice.

John is standing in a hospital room, devoid of all warmth.

He wants to rewind. Before Mary – who wasn’t supposed to be like this – shot Sherlock, before he got married to someone he didn’t love as much as he loved Sherlock, before Sherlock fell off a rooftop and John felt his entire world crumble under his feet, before the Woman, before she disrupted their lives. He wants to go back to this fixed point, where it was just the two of them – and it was enough.

They’re back in the swimming pool and Sherlock is standing proudly – almost invincible in John’s eyes. He’s scared but determined and John feels like he can almost touch it, touch him, that they are close to the breaking point, the point where John would grab him and tell him –

_I am in love with you. I’ve been in love with you since I first saw you that day in the lab. I want us to be together. I want us to be together in every way you’ll want us to be. I want to wake up next to you every morning, I want to get down on my knees for you, I want to breathe everyone of your cells – you’re a scientist, you would like that. And if you don’t want that it’s ok, I’ll be happy living next you, looking at you every day for the rest of my life. I’ll be happy with us dying here, entangled, as close as two human beings could ever be. I’ll do everything._

And then the bomb goes off.

In this fantasy John isn’t quick enough to dive into the water. He has just enough time to cover Sherlock’s body with his. For a few seconds he thinks it will be enough, he believes they will get out of this alive, but of course they don’t. That’s not how the story goes, at least not in John’s dreams. (He thinks other people would call those dreams nightmares. They would be wrong, but John can’t tell them that. They wouldn’t understand. For them to understand, they would have had to live what John and Sherlock lived: a night that doesn’t seem to end, a last phone call from a rooftop, dying and resurrecting, being separated from what you want the most and being brought back together again).

In John’s dreams his body isn’t enough to keep them whole and alive, his body fails them, as surely as it failed him when he was shot. The last thing he remembers, before dying, is willing his body, his flesh, to protect Sherlock as long as it can.

He doesn’t know if it works. There’s nothing left to fantasize about after he dies.

\----

They’re still holding hands. John knows he only has a few moments left, a few moments before he has to let go, to release Sherlock’s hand and hope everything will go according to the plan. Time is running out, but this time again, Sherlock will come back. John knows it, John is sure of it. (He can’t afford to think otherwise).

It’s the beginning of January, the air is cold and tastes like iron, like something cool and metallic, something that grips you and doesn’t let go. John knows this taste. It’s how endings taste.

John remembers it from when he was shot in Afghanistan; John remembers it from the pool.

Maybe he got it all wrong. Maybe they don’t die asphyxiated by the water; maybe they don’t die scorched by an exploding bomb. Maybe it’s simpler than that. Easier.

\----

John says “run” and Sherlock doesn’t. Neither of them wants to let go. Neither of them wants the other to die.

In the end, two bullets, fired from a corner of the swimming pool, take the decision away from them both – from Moriarty even. In John’s dreams, the first bullet hits him. Because even in his dreams, in his twisted imagination, in something that he could never qualify as a nightmare – because nightmares don’t work like that, they don’t take root in your veins and burn with such longing that you wish for them to be real – the first bullet hits John. If they both have to go, John will go first and will never, ever, see Sherlock’s incredible and unique face, a face he loved with such passion, turn cold and lifeless again. That’s the one thing John can’t allow. Not even in his dreams.

So that’s how it goes. The first bullet hits John and John averts his eyes to avoid looking at Sherlock’s face, to avoid seeing what is or isn’t there (panic, love, indifference, grief, relief?). He doesn’t hear the impact of the second bullet when it hits Sherlock’s chest, he certainly doesn’t hear Sherlock scream.

John’s eyes are focused on the dark corner the bullets came from; so dark you shouldn’t be able to distinguish a single thing. John doesn’t know if it’s because he’s dying – and everything is suddenly so clear – or if it’s because that’s what his imagination wants him to see, but there is a brief flash of blonde hair, hair he has caressed again and again, hair he would recognize with his eyes closed.  Mary is the sniper at the pool.

Mary is the one who kills them.

\----

Mary’s hand has replaced Sherlock’s in his and John is thinking about the plan, has to think about it if he doesn’t want to be sick.

John is a lot of things but he’s not delusional. He can be obtuse, he can be blind, but he knows that Mary killing them in the swimming pool is just an apt metaphor for everything that’s happened since he let her into their lives. John knows he’s _guilty_. Dreaming of dying isn’t an absolution. It’s not even an apology. It’s a feeble attempt at bringing order back in the chaos that is his life. It’s a way to beg for mercy.

What John really wants to say is –

_If you had asked, I would have gone with you, to Dubai or New York, to the most remote locations of this earth. I would have endured the sleepless nights and the terror; I would have followed you until the end. I would have brought down Moriarty’s network with you, I would have stand by your side, and I would have healed your wounds and would have hold you through all your nightmares. I would have made love to you every night and tried to erase the damage others have inflicted on you._

It’s a way to say – 

_If you had asked, I would have been there; I would have held your hand, forever, and never let go._

But John can’t say those things anymore. It’s too late – always has been in a way.

Instead, he watches the plane getting smaller and smaller, in the distance. He remembers wishing they had died in that swimming pool.

He wonders if Sherlock ever wished it too.


End file.
